R2P

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Four years ago, the United States and its NATO and royal Arab allies destroyed the government of Libya and handed the country over to jihadists, who now include factions aligned with the Islamic State. Thousands of heads have rolled in the wake of Obama’s 2011 air war – none of them American. “Libyans and Egyptian migrant workers pay the price for western aggressions.”

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

President Obama brought along his highest profile minions to honor the dead King of Saudi Arabia, America’s partner in creating the international jihadist network. U.S. corporate media enthusiastically joined in singing the praises of absolute feudal rule and oil-financed terror. “The media get their marching orders straight from the White House.”

by Mark P. Fancher

Euro-American imperialism is now prepared to use raw military force to once again dominate the African continent – with Washington and Paris taking the lead. “In recent years, threats to western economic hegemony in Africa by China, new African self-determination initiatives, terrorism and other developments have prompted western governments to return to Africa with their armies.”

by Ann Garrison

Brooklyn federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s choice for the next attorney general, took off a few years in early 2000s to serve as a prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda. Lynch is proud of strong-arming Hutu defendants for a tribunal that failed to indict a single Tutsi – despite the fact that Tutsi invaders won the war and more Hutus than Tutsis died in the bloodbath.

by Christopher Black

There is no shortage of imperial operatives eager to defend Paul Kagame’s dictatorial Tutsi regime in Rwanda. Kagame’s role in the Rwandan slaughter and the Congo genocide that followed is thoroughly documented in the book, Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later. But facts mean nothing to Kagame apologist Alex Obote-Odora, whose arguments are shredded by the author.

by Thomas C. Mountain

It appears that the corporate guardians of international “human rights” have acted as paid operatives of the U.S. effort to destabilize the fiercely independent east African nation of Eritrea. The scandal is reminiscent of operations against Cuban during the same period.

by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka

Twenty-five years ago, the U.S military bombed, shot and burned to death 3,000 people in the mostly Black neighborhood of El Chorillo, in the capital city of Panama. It was a war crime, within the larger crime of foreign invasion. “U.S. troops committed numerous other war crimes, from summary executions to the wanton destruction of civilian property and the failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets.”

by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

Rwanda has banned the BBC for airing a documentary that reveals the Big Lie told by Paul Kagame and his cronies about what happened in Rwanda in 1994. Kagame and his RPF have for 20 years concealed their primary role in setting off the genocide – in which most victims were Hutus and not Tutsis, contrary to State propaganda amplified by international media and powerful

enablers. With publication of a new book, this Big Lie is being dismantled.

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Poor little ISIS, the orphan with so many fathers. President Obama is trying to assemble a coalition of parents to kill the wayward child, but some of the other baby-daddies are busy fighting among themselves over who is going to bring up the next generation of jihadists. Where did it all go so very, very wrong?

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“If Obama was serious about wanting to crush ISIS, the best and most logical ally would be Syrian President Assad, whose army has so far prevailed against every flavor of jihadist the U.S. has been able to throw at it.” But the U.S. remains intent on overthrowing Assad, and will conjure up a pretext to attack Syria under cover of fighting ISIS.

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 8/25/14

Obama and ISIS in Dance of Death

The growing U.S. bombing campaign against the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria serves no one but war profiteers, said veteran anti-war activist David Swanson. “I know that ISIS had to be aware that slitting throats on camera would result in more bombing, just as President Obama had to be aware that blowing men, women and children up with 500-pound bombs would result in slitting throats,” said Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.Org. “The beneficiaries of escalation, which is entirely predictable, are the weapons makers.”

Black Strategies Must Include Self-Defense

“First and foremost, it is right for our people to rebel,” said Kali Akuno, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and co-author of the groundbreaking report “Operation Ghetto Storm,” which documented extrajudicial killings of Black Americans under color of law. “I think it boiled over in Ferguson as a result of a transformation in our people’s consciousness, especially our young folks,” said Akuno. “They’ve had enough of the brutality, of being systematically excluded.” Black community self-defense must be part of any organizing strategy. “This has been part and parcel of what we know we have to do in the face of white supremacy and in the face of the brutality that the capitalist system has reserved for us, in particular.”

Black Passivity is Mentally Unhealthy

Political protest is therapeutic for Black Americans, said Dr. Vernellia Randall, professor emeritus of law at the University of Dayton and author Dying While Black. “I want us to be less passive, I want us to engage in civil disobedience” – and not the kind of protest-like activities sanctioned by the authorities. “If they’re telling us, Here’s how you can protest, then that, to me, is not civil disobedience,” said Randall. “If you are coloring within the lines that the establishment establishes, then you are putting no pressure on the establishment.”

Cuba Should Join in Fight for Slavery Reparations

The young United States was a horrible example of democracy, but it did lead the way in the business of human trafficking. “After the establishment of the United States, it quickly became the leader in the African slave trade to Cuba,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston and author of Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow. “They also became the leader of the African slave trade to Brazil, helping to account for the fact that Brazil has more people of African descent than any other nation outside Nigeria,” said Horne, who hopes to enlist Cuba in “our journey to claim reparations for the enslavement of Africans in the Americas.”

by Thomas C. Mountain

While western progressives kept track of Obama’s drone wars around the world, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Somalis starved to death in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, as a consequence of state policy. The Ethiopian prime minister who engineered the genocide-by-famine “was later eulogized at his funeral by none other than Susan Rice, presently National Security Advisor to Barack Obama.”

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

For more than three decades, the U.S. has deployed Islamic fundamentalist surrogates to fight its imperial wars in Muslim lands. Now, the world’s most successful jihadists have turned on their former masters – and will soon go after the Gulf oil states. “The Caliphate has taken the ideology to its logical and ghastly conclusion, and dares to challenge the legitimacy of its former funders, staunch allies of the ‘Crusader’.”

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The “humanitarian” U.S. military occupation of Africa has been very successful, thus far. “The Chibok abductions have served the same U.S. foreign policy purposes as Joseph Kony sightings in central Africa.” Imagine: the superpower that financed the genocide of six million in Congo, claims to be a defender of teenage girls and human rights on the continent. If you believe that, then you are probably a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

In what may be the world’s most bizarre spectacle, notables from around the globe this year pay homage to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, as if he is the savior of Africa. “For 20 years, Kagame has posed as the soldier who stopped the Rwandan genocide, when all evidence and logic point to him as the main perpetrator of the crime.”

by executive editor Glen Ford

The latest deployment of U.S. Special Forces aircraft to central Africa is an escalation of an effective U.S. occupation of the continent, via AFRICOM and subservient indigenous armies. “AFRICOM’s mission is to lock the continent in a cage of steel, to imprison it in the imperial orbit.” President Obama casts Joseph Kony in the role of Africa’s Osama bin Laden, to justify the military buildup.

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

President Obama has thrown international law into history’s dustbin, torn up the U.S. Bill of Rights, and is mapping millions for possible future detention. “One court order + one suspect number + three hops = everybody remotely involved in anti-war activity.”

by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka

It is difficult to call this week’s gathering in Montreux, Switzerland, a “peace conference” on Syria, since the U.S. and its allies are determined to change the regime by force of arms. Washington has forged an “unholy alliance with its “Wahhabi allies from Saudi Arabia and al-Qaeda,” who act as America’s “boots on the ground.”

Lynne Stewart Rings in New Year on the “Outside”

People’s lawyer Lynne Stewart called her New Year’s Eve compassionate release from a Texas federal prison a “true victory” of the people. The Obama administration “would not give an inch, and we would not give an inch, and it worked out in the end that they blinked,” said Stewart, who served four years of a ten-year sentence for zealously defending her client. “It’s a victory for the people because the people adopted me as their heroine. I’m determined to fight the cancer, I’m determined to become an activist again.” Stewart is battling Stage Four breast cancer.

“Human Rights” Needs Redefinition

“The potential of the human rights ideal has been hijacked by western powers” to “justify their continued hegemony,” said Ajamu Baraka, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network. What’s needed is a “people-centered” approach to human rights, one that rejects exploitation of humankind. So-called “humanitarian” military intervention under the doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) “is no more than a 21st century re-articulation of the White Man’s Burden,” said Baraka.

Washington DC Moves Toward Pot Decriminalization

The District of Columbia, which racks up more arrests of Black people for marijuana possession than any other major population center, will soon pass “one of the most progressive decriminalization bills in the country,” said Seema Sandanandan, program director for the Nation’s Capital chapter of the ACLU. The legislation would set the penalty for possession of an ounce or less of pot at a $25 civil citation. It would also forbid police from using the scent of marijuana as a pretext to search people, said Sandanandan.

What NAFTA Has Wrought

In the two decades since President Bill Clinton pushed his North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress, “NAFTA has completely devastated United States manufacturing,” causing the loss of five million jobs and tens of thousands of factories, said Alisa Simmons, field director of Public Citizens’ Global Trade Watch. The organization’s report, “NAFTA at 20,” details how “trade agreements are designed to serve corporations, not the people,” said Simmons. President Obama’s proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is shrouded in secrecy, is even worse: “NAFTA on steroids.”

Assassination and Mass Killing in Congo

Many Congolese suspect assassins killed popular army Col. Mamadou Ndala, who was considered a hero in the war against Rwandan-backed rebels, according to Kambale Musavuli, of Friends of Congo. Ndala was uncompromising in his pursuit of M-23 fighters, with whom the Congolese government signed yet another accord, late last year. In Kinshasa, the capital city, at least 100 youthful followers of a political preacher were killed by security forces after they seized a television station and accused President Joseph Kabila of being a “Rwandan imposter.” “The Congolese people are caught in a very vicious circle,” said Musavuli. “They have an illegitimate, oppressive government” and “neighbors who support and arm rebels.”

Mumia on Winnie Mandela

Nelson Mandela’s former wife Winnie, who was banned as a non-person during much of her husband’s long incarceration, was demonized after the end of formal apartheid “because she wouldn’t agree to a new political dispensation that left most Africans exploited,” said U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. In a commentary titled “For the Love of Winnie,” Mumia wrote: “For millions and millions of people, her brilliance, her beauty and her courage were like a torch in the mountains. Indeed, she is adored.”

by Edward S. Herman

Desmond Tutu’s defense of the International Criminal Court ignores the ICC’s record as an annex of white imperial power. The former South African archbishop defends the ICC’s selective prosecution of Africans and those who anger the western powers. In truth, the “ICC may have black representatives, but it is not a black court in its ultimate power and it does not represent the ‘interests of the [black] people.’”

by Yoichi Shimatsu

Genocide is not only an ongoing policy of Israel, but is embedded in the institutions and history of the Zionist State, according to the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal. The verdict provides “a lawful alternative to the current response of so-called humanitarian intervention, invasion, occupation and regime change” promoted by the U.S. and its allies, who are also complicit in Israel’s crimes.

“Responsibility to Protect” is a bogus doctrine designed to undermine the very foundations of international law. It is law rewritten for the powerful “The structures and laws that underlie the application of R2P exempt the Great Power enforcers from the laws and rules that they enforce on the lesser powers.”

During President Obama’s run-up to war with Syria, “African Americans were, for the first time in polling history, the most bellicose major ethnicity in the United States.” How could such a political role-reversal come to pass? “The progressive, peace-seeking African American worldview is out of sync with the deep imperative to support the First Black President.”

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Inside the U.S. information bubble, the conspiracy of lies about Syria is nearly seamless. “Obama has no reason to fear that his tall tales will be presented as anything other than fact” because corporate media and the two corporate parties speak the same Orwellian language. Assad is the immediate target, but the common enemy is the rule of law, domestic and international.

The U.S. reprises Iraq, inventing a WMD threat from Syria. The FBI concocts home-grown terror through stings, while the NSA claims it has secretly saved many lives. “Why this steady stream of government-invented terror, if the real thing is so abundant?” And, isn’t the U.S. arming and funding the same jihadists they are supposed to be listening for on our telephones?

The U.S. imperial juggernaut attempts to bamboozle its home audience with the fiction that its war against Syria is a “humanitarian” venture. “The immediate priority for anti-war, anti-imperialist, human rights activists in the U.S. is to strip away the moral pretext of humanitarian intervention and expose its ugly, imperialist reality.”

President Obama’s choices of Samantha Power as United Nations ambassador and Susan Rice for National Security Council chief should trouble “those of us who are concerned about Africa” because they were “the two most aggressive individuals in the intervention in Libya,” said Maurice Carney, executive director of Friends of Congo. “Congo serves as a massive inconvenience for the likes of Power and Rice,” because U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda are implicated in the genocide of millions in that country, site of “what the United Nations, itself, says is the deadliest conflict in the world since the Holocaust,” said Carney.

Rice, Power Implicated in Libya Genocide, Assault on Syria

Renowned professor of international law Francis Boyle says Susan Rice and Samantha Power were among those most responsible “for slaughtering 50,000 Libyans under the pretext of Responsibility to Protect [R2P]. We saw outright genocide inflicted on the black citizens of Libya and black foreign guest workers…these people were outright exterminated,” said Boyle. “These are the same people who will be pushing [R2P] against Syria.”

Tell Harvard: Stop Polling Black People

Eighty-six percent of Black respondents told a Harvard/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation poll they were “satisfied” with their lives – but the numbers do not mean Blacks are doing well, said South Carolina author and activist Kevin Alexander Gray. In southern poor communities “people used to sweep the dirt in their front yards,” said Gray. “They didn’t have lawns, but they swept the dirt because they wanted to keep up appearances. Some of these polls are like sweeping dirt in the front yard.” Harvard should refrain from polling African Americans, since it doesn’t “know how to measure well-being in the Black community,” said Gray.

Detroit City Council Useless

The Detroit City Council has remained largely passive while an appointed Emergency Financial Manager considers auctioning the city’s assets to pay corporate creditors. Local people’s lawyer Tom Stephens says the council is “willing to compromise with power” as long as “they keep a seat at the council table, and are still getting their salaries. I think, at this point, short of, perhaps, human sacrifice, they’re willing to go along with pretty much anything.”

The doctrine of “humanitarian” military intervention “has developed into the most effective ideological weapon the liberal human rights community provided Western imperialism since the fall of the Soviet State.” In truth, it is simply an updated form of the “white man’s burden” – and a license to wage war against all who stand in the way of U.S. domination of the globe.

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